The Dark Side Of Emotional Intelligence

November 5, 2014 1:13 PM

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Emotional intelligence is generally regarded as a good thing -- the skill, defined by the Oxford psychology dictionary as the "[a]bility to monitor one's own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour," is an important tool for forming and navigating interpersonal relationships. But new research suggests it also has a dark side: Young women with higher emotional intelligence are more likely to commit acts of delinquency, finds a study recently published in the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology.

For the study, led by Plymouth University's Alison Bacon, researchers asked 96 college students a series of questions to evaluate them on a spectrum of thrill-seeking tendencies, delinquent behavior, and emotional intelligence. They had expected that while people with thrill-seeking tendencies might...